g hands, one had besought the Emperor Rudolph
to pardon the loyal servant, the other had thanked Biberli, and informed
him that his master remembered and was working for him.

Katterle had reached Heinz, had been required to tell him everything she
knew about Eva and Biberli down to the minutest detail and had then been
commissioned to repeat to the latter what had been also contained in the
letter. On the way home, however, she only reached Schwabach, for the
long walk in the most terrible anxiety, drenched by a pouring rain,
whilst enquiring her way to Heinz, and especially the terrible
excitements of the last few days, had been too much even for her
vigorous constitution. Her pulse was throbbing violently and her brow
was burning when she knocked at the door of Apel, the carrier, who had
taken her into his waggon at Schweinau, and the good old man and his
wife received and nursed her. The fever was soon broken, but weakness
prevented her journeying to Schweinau on foot, and, as Apel intended to
go to Nuremberg the first of the following week, she had been forced
to content herself with sending the messenger who had betrayed her
confidence.

How hard it was for Katterle to wait! And her impatience reached its
height when, before she could leave, some of the imperial troopers
stabled their horses at the carrier's and reported that Castle
Siebenburg and the robber stronghold of the Absbachs were destroyed. Sir
Heinz Schorlin had fought like St. George. Now he was detained only by
the fortresses of the knights Hirschhorn and Oberstein, whose situation
on inaccessible crags threatened long to defy the imperial power.

The thought that the strong Swiss girl might be ill never entered the
mind of Biberli or Eva, but in quiet hours he asked himself which it
would probably grieve him most to miss forever--his beautiful young
nurse or his countrywoman and sweetheart. His heart belonged solely
to Katterle, but towards Eva he obeyed the old trait inherent in his
nature, and clung with the same loyalty hitherto evinced for his master
to her whom he now regarded as his future mistress.

This she must and should be, because already life seemed to him no
longer desirable without her voice. Never had he heard one whose pure
tones penetrated the heart more deeply. And had Heinz been permitted to
hear her talk with the Dominicans, he would have given up his wish to
renounce the world and, instead of entering a monastery, striven wit